Server virtualization enables hardware resources on a physical server, such as CPU, memory, disk storage and network resources, to be shared among multiple virtualized computing systems. Server virtualization provides a computing platform that may be used to create and run multiple virtual operating systems (referred to as virtual machines or VMs). The virtual machines share the actual physical resources of the server.
A server virtualization cluster may include multiple virtualization servers, administrated using a single management domain. Like physical servers connected to a data communications network, the VMs on a given virtualization server can communicate with one another as well as with computing systems outside the virtualization cluster.
In some cases, a media access control (MAC) address within a virtualization cluster may be “spoofed.” That is, the MAC address used by a vNIC on a first virtual machine may be duplicated and used for a vNIC on a second virtual machine, e.g., on a different virtualization server. This results in network frames being diverted from the first VM to the second VM. MAC spoofing is a serious security concern as it allows one virtual machine to impersonate another.